Study Guide: Championship Guard Passing DVD 1 by Lucas Lepri

"Lucas Lepri is one of the most dynamic and creative competitors in action today his techniques are smooth and easy to learn I strongly recommend his DVDs to anyone interested in learning the real jiu jitsu." - Master Romero "Jacare" Cavalcanti

Lucas Lepri has been one of the top lightweights in the world since 2007. In that time the Alliance black belt has won numerous World & Pan Am titles while teaching at Alliance Atlanta. Lucas’ newest DVD release focuses solely on passed the guard and spends a lot of time on the De la Riva guard and other open guards. With the rise of the Berimbolo and successful open guard players this DVD set comes at an auspicious time.

Lucas Lepri’s DVD set consists of 2 DVDs and covers ~3 hours of instruction in total. The initial DVD in the set covers: closed guard, butterfly guard and De la Riva Guard. The DLR material is the bulk of the instruction and all of the techniques are heavily dependent on your opponent wearing a gi.

The focus of this article is the 1st DVD and is intended to give you a study guide of that content so that you’re better able to use the information provided in the DVD. As a study guide the review portion is going to be pretty light and I highly recommend reading this review at Sherdog by one of their moderators.

Technical Specs:The audio and video are sufficient for the task of relaying the information to you. Digitsu uses different angles and also picture in picture to show the same technique from different perspectives. Each technique is gone thru in detail twice and then demonstrated several more times. Lucas’ English is accented but clear. From an overall production quality standpoint this is very similar to Stephan Kesting’s instructionals.

Closing Thoughts:My instructor and I both watched the videos and liked the content and as someone who watches a lot of instructionals many of the techniques will be new most people. We both also agreed that this isn’t for someone that is a beginner. Lucas makes some assumptions during his explanations that could create problems for those with less mat time. At the very least you’ll need to be an advanced white belt or blue belt.

The study guide should give you a good idea of what’s covered in the DVD and also help you to see the connectivity of the techniques. It may not be readily apparent while watching the DVDs but the DLR passes do all share some common details that will be very useful and easily implemented.

Who’s this for?As a guard player I really liked it a lot. I was able to get some pointers on not only how to pass the DLR guard but also what they may be using to pass mine. If you’re a competitor that sees these guards a lot and/or has problems getting past them this DVD could be what you’re looking for. At ~$70 for 3 hours of instruction (28 techniques are shown) the DVD is priced competitively with our instructional DVD of similar length and newness.

Please take a few moments to check out Digitsu on Facebook and their website as well as Lucas’ Facebook and Website. As always the study guide is available for download as a PDF at the link below.

I'm a 37 year old husband and father to two girls. I train under Ezra Lenon (black belt under Kiko France of American Top Team) in St Louis MO. I drag my two little girls with me to the gym every chance that I get and usually end up training 5 days a week. I'm a huge gear junkie, spend entirely too much time watching BJJ videos and am fascinated with the cerebral side of our sport. When I'm not training or hanging with my family I work as a clinical pharmacist.